Here RantWoman humbly offers a number of
enhancements to her Meeting’s March 2018 State of Society report. RantWoman
discovered this document in 2019 and does not feel led to excavate the unedited
original from her email archives. However, Rantwoman is humbled by the, um,
insistent and somewhat uncentered tone. Please hold Rantwoman and those around
her in the Light.
RantWoman intends the enhancements as a
gesture of love. RantWoman recognizes the possibility that she is telling too
much of the Truth and that her offerings maylook more like further
demonstration of RantWoman’s generous capacity to be insufferable than like a
gesture of love. PLEASE hold the good intentions in the Light, for one thing
because RantWoman’s world is overflowing with other strands of ardently
professed good intention, good intention which RantWoman is somehow not always
able to detect amid nerves being stomped on, nauseating misuse of terminology,
and general day to day woe and intrigue.
RantWoman also acknowledges that PERHAPS
she should have more insistently offered enhancements during the drafting
process including both substance and wordsmithing. TOUGH. It is NOT RantWoman’s
job to fix EVERYTHING that might send her around the bend.
RantWoman further recognizes that she may
have gone overboard, for example about cultivating her own Messiah complex.
RantWoman has somehow achieved the role of official Meeting Bogeyman; RantWoman
did not go looking for this role but since it has come her way, RantWoman is
seasoning a call to play the role with gusto. RantWoman wants to recognize
service by many others in her community and thanks in advance anyone intrepid
enough to read through the entire offering.
University
Friends Meeting
State
of the Meeting Report
March
29, 2018
University Meeting had a year that
has been both exciting and challenging.
We have sought guidance and support from the Spirit as well as from each
other. We continue to learn as
we bump along this journey. Our
demographics make it a challenge to recognize and confront racism, classism,
and other demonstrations of privilege within our community and in the larger
society. Ableism, anyone?Anyone?Off-topic? Really? STILL? Sexism?
Worship remains at the center of our
community. The number of
attenders at the 11:00 o’clock worship has decreased [relative to what?] and
currently ranges from 45 – 60. Our
worship is generally centered and refreshing, though rarely without vocal
ministry. The 9:30 worship
remains loyally attended by 15-30 people who seek a more intimate, silent
worship. Attenders of our small
Wednesday evening worship find it very valuable [sigh: RantWoman wishes she had
lingered over this sentence sooner because, well yuck. Uninspiring…and
sufficient for this year.]. By
ending unprogrammed worship after half an hour and starting our business
meetings at 11:30 on the 2nd Sunday we continue to have significant attendance. As we begin each business meeting, our clerk
reminds us that we are meeting on land of the Duwamish people. Sometimes business is hurried so we can end
by 1:00; sometimes we go late, which results in problems with child care
and lunch preparation.. We have
not yet found a good solution.
Many
among us suffer with faltering hearing; gradually thanks partly to RantWoman
being ferociously true to her Light for a long time, we have adopted a practice
of using a movable mic for Meeting for Business, Adult Religious Education, and
some other events though not Meeting for Worship. The discipline of waiting for
the mic helps ensure pauses between offerings and increases opportunities for
people to be truly heard. Emailing meeting documents in advance is another
important accessibility measure for people who can no longer read print.
Our First Day School continues to
thrive. As the children have
grown older, they are increasingly forthcoming about reporting what they have
done in First Day School at the close of 11 AM worship. We are grateful for the regular
teachers who prepare lessons/themes and for the volunteers who assist. RantWoman
is deeply grateful that between kids maturing and thoughtful measures by
parents and others, our Meeting has evolved ways for children to run and play
while paying attention to safety and mobility concerns for Friends like
RantWoman who do not see well or have other physical challenges
Our Adult Religious Education
remains well-attended with diverse offering from spiritual education to
practical matters like earthquake preparedness. The committee has chosen monthly
themes that challenge us and provide opportunity for sharing in depth.
This is the 25th year of
our QuEST program (Quaker
Experiential Service & Training). In May 2017, we welcomed a
new QuEST Director, the 6th of the program and said goodbye to the
last Director who served faithfully for 8 years. We are pleased that South Seattle
Friends Meeting has become a co-sponsor of QuEST.
We seasoned a minute for North
Pacific Yearly Meeting (NPYM), Welcoming All Genders. We educated ourselves and approved a minute
for ourselves as well as supporting the one for NPYM. Many
of us came to a deeper understanding when a new person who had become active in
the Meeting shared that they felt they had found their spiritual community
their first day when they saw preferred pronouns on nametags. However, preferred pronouns remain a
challenge for many Friends. http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2017/10/a-glorious-fit-or-2-or-3-or-17-of-them.html
As a big meeting, we struggle to
draw new people into the life of the meeting. [This could not possibly have
anything to do with busy lives, members of pastoral care committees who take
days of texting and email to schedule phone conversations or are snippy when
phoned, and aging Friends not even interested in conversations about
connections involving younger Friends. Or maybe RantWoman justhas a gift for
bringing out the best in people?]
We have had 5 deaths in the Meeting this year and have welcomed 2 adult members and 2 new junior members. The staffing of
committees is a major challenge as we have 17 committees and only 60 active
people on the roster. [This could not possibly have anything to do
with a history of Nominating Committee indulging people’s conflict avoidance,
Friends who think when then do not understand someone that person should just
go away, …] Several
positions remained unfilled this year, most notably that of recording clerk. We are looking at a possible new
configuration of committees. Our Peace
and Social Concerns has joined with Friends from South Seattle and North
Seattle Friends Church to develop the Quaker Social Concerns Network to work
together on issues.
A big change this year has been the
departure of our long-time tenants, the American Friends Service Committee and
Global Garden Preschool. The Northwest
Indian Committee, spun off from AFSC, rents a small space from us. Operation Nightwatch
provides beds for up to 50 homeless men each night. Facing Homelessness is organizing the
Block project to place a Block Houses (125 sq. ft.) in a backyard in each city
block as well as providing clothing and other materials to homeless people. We
feel well led that our basement is being used by organizations addressing
long-standing concerns for homeless
people and Native Americans. The
Meeting is deeply grateful to members of the Finance Committee for shepherding
these changes: finding the tenants, overseeing the building changes and
staying in touch with the organizations.
The
population of the Puget Sound is growing rapidly with a million more people
expected in the region by 2050. Housing supply is nowhere near keeping up with
demand and it is going to take more than one tiny house per block to ensure all
the newcomers have safe sustainable places to live. Some among us warmly
embrace the challenge it will be to renew community amid all these changes.
Indeed
our area is in the middle of a regionwide housing affordability crisis.
Escalating property values have helped provide some among us with generous
retirement options; others have been called to move from the Seattle area to
smaller cities both to the north and to the south to find more manageable cost
of living. Our sorehead member RantWoman finds these changes a mixed blessing.
RantWoman is glad on balance for new rental income but admits a peculiar
scruple about depending for income on the continued existence of homelessness,
even homelessness well cared for in Quaker facilities. And please do not get
RantWoman started about wheelchair accessibility for ….
We have approved the new volunteer position of Gardening Coordinator to lead others who share a passion for our
grounds. However, we have
struggled to care for our buildings. After many business meetings, we
approved a new staff position: a full-time live-in Facilities
Manager. The position was proposed by Finance, Facilities, and Personnel Committees and
changes our current staff configuration.
It was a challenge to
balance Meeting needs and care for current staff. We have lost some valued members in this
process. We provided one staff person a severance package but the final approval
still felt to some like “push around vulnerable women.”
This year we began discussions about
the future of our campus with a well-attended retreat facilitated by the ad hoc
committee on campus discernment. [There was a hiccup in the planning process. http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2017/09/reasonable-accommodations-requests.html ] Options are to stay where we are, sell and either buy or rent elsewhere,
remodel part or all of the current property. This will be a multi-year discernment process! [This
will be a multi-year process with many opportunities for community building as
we bring our individual Light about transit development, affordable housing,
property stewardship, and general centered discernment into the process.]
In a long process, we came to unity
that we will hire people regardless of immigration status, knowing that this
could lead to civil disobedience.
We recognized that we need to deal with our conflicts. We had a retreat
in May 2017 to build community, learn
how we can hear one another, feel heard and connect when we disagree. [We
still had not learned either how to talk with / listen to RantWoman or how to
use a movable microphone. http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2017/05/retreat-lets-do-it-again.html
]
We had another retreat in January 2018,
led by John Calvi, dealing with conflict and connections. [hallelujah! Praise Jayzus and
whatever other exclamations of joy seem on point: at this retreat we used
microphones!] While these [antecedent?] have not
resolved the issues, they helped
us learn ways to address issues and concerns.
We have also recognized
that we have tolerated cyberbullying and other inappropriate behavior. Care & Counsel named the behavior
in the July 2017 business meeting and Friends were urged to confront such
behavior or contact C&C. Acknowledging this problem and setting limits
has been a continuing challenge. We
have lost attenders because of this. We have discovered that a
loving community that strives to discern the Spirit, individually and
corporately, is not and will not ever be calm and peaceful. But
we must continue to try to be that loving community, to confront inappropriate
behavior and to set appropriate boundaries so that all may grow.
We are also grateful that when all is
said and done, ranking only medium horrible, or about average in the pantheon
of #disabilityinchurch stories on the internet is probably something to be
proud of.
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